Anti-Gun Group Encourages Attacks On Gun Owners

A new group advo­cat­ing gun con­trol has appeared on social media, and this time, ratio­nal­i­ty need not apply. The group, call­ing them­selves the Bet­sy Riot, call on mem­bers “to prank, lam­baste, and gen­er­al­ly fuck up gun cul­ture.” Their web­site advo­cates “indi­vid­ual acts of gun cul­ture sab­o­tage or pub­lic dis­rup­tion,” while insist­ing that mem­bers “respect the anonymi­ty of oth­ers.”

It’s always cute to see groups who yearn to attack the rights of oth­ers, while insist­ing on pro­tect­ing their own—cute right up until the moment that dis­gust takes over. The web­site sug­gests that print­ing out the stick­er tem­plates they offer and putting them on pub­lic prop­er­ty would be an ever-so-naughty thing to do. Using mark­ers is also men­tioned for peo­ple who lack a print­er. Though per­haps they’re only inter­est­ed in trolling on Twit­ter, as the hash­tags #Bet­syRi­ot and #Fuck­Y­er­Guns indi­cate by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of accounts that have popped up in the last few days to spew insults at gun own­ers before block­ing them in fear.

Per­haps the Bet­sies have in mind the inci­dent sev­er­al years ago in which the names and address­es of gun per­mit hold­ers in the coun­ties around New York City were pub­lished by The Jour­nal News. If you’re going around defac­ing property—as in, for exam­ple, past­ing stick­ers in mag­a­zines on a rack for sale in a store—you deserve anonymi­ty in the minds of some gun con­trol advo­cates, but if you’re a gun own­er who went through the oner­ous process of fol­low­ing the law in New York, your exer­cise of rights is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that can be announced to the world. And to any thief who takes the time to read the news­pa­per.

In the mind of the activist, all too often every­thing is accept­able in push­ing the agen­da. That much is clear. What isn’t so easy to under­stand is why gun con­trol advo­cates believe that harass­ment and sneer­ing will win over sup­port for their cause.

The phe­nom­e­non of Don­ald Trump as pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has caused dis­may among the talk­ing heads and among peo­ple who are con­cerned for the well-being of this nation, but there is a strong cur­rent of pop­ulism, of reac­tion against out-of-touch elites. Some of this has been shared by the many peo­ple who sup­port­ed Bernie Sanders dur­ing the pri­maries and who had their goals squashed by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee. This is mere­ly the lat­est exam­ple of Amer­i­cans not lik­ing being talked down to. Just as the mid­dle of the coun­try would object to sal­sa com­ing from New York City, at least in the famous com­mer­cial of a while ago, we don’t see why our gun laws or oth­er rules that gov­ern our lives should be for­mu­lat­ed from on high and far away with­out ref­er­ence to our needs and con­cerns.

And this is ulti­mate­ly what will be the down­fall of gun con­trol. Telling Amer­i­cans that we must be con­trolled for our own good is exact­ly the worst way to go about achiev­ing one’s goals. And advo­cat­ing trolling or prop­er­ty destruc­tion isn’t much bet­ter. So many peo­ple who demand gun con­trol fail to real­ize that we gun own­ers aren’t giv­ing up or going away. We’ve fig­ured out that com­pro­mise gets us noth­ing but more loss­es in the exer­cise of our rights, and the antics of Bet­syRi­ot won’t change that.

The Yeast­ies, sor­ry, that’s Bet­sies, are as cute as their sim­ple­ton cause.

ReloadOne.com Author’s note: I am propos­ing a counter hash­tag for the Bet­sies. Start using #Yeast­yRi­ot